PBBans has been online for almost 14 years and over that time we have undergone many changes and overcome many obstacles. From DDoS attacks to hosting changes, we have managed to come out on top providing a welcomed anti-cheat community for Punk Buster enabled games.
However, given our continued shortfall of donations, lack of new games with Punk Buster and games moving away from server rentals we feel our only viable option is to shut down in the next few months.

We looked at moving to a cheaper host but in the end, it’s not worth the time and hassle just to stay online for a few extra months. Our server count is dropping by the day and donations too. Moving is always a pain and we end up losing streaming servers that never seem to get setup again.

The last new game with Punk Buster was Battlefield Hardline release in March 2015 and the last listed Punk Buster update was June 2015. More games are movi ng towards in house anti-cheat or using newer 3rd party solutions such as FairFight and BattlEye. Many argue the effectiveness of each but in the end, it’s what the new games are using.

So, what happens after we close? We plan to host a basic site with the last banlists for download, PB files of legacy games and a farewell message of our closure. Emails will still work but the rest of the website and streaming will no longer exist at that point.

It’s sad for us as we have all made PBBans into a good community to fight cheaters and it was a very hard decision to close but asking for donations time and time again has lost its appeal.

Skills & Perks Re-specialisation
You can now reset your spent skills and perk points to better customize your character. Choosing the right skills and perks is vital for every hunter, so there is a cost attached to resetting your points. We hope you like the addition of this feature and are looking forward to your feedback.

Exit to Main Menu
Our intention was to bring an “Exit to Main Menu” option to the game with today’s patch but it is unfortunately not ready yet. We are aware that this feature is requested, we just need a bit more time to guarantee that it works flawlessly.

Freezes, Clues and Stability
We optimized the clue system to improve performance, as well as eliminate disappearing clues and crashes. Work will continue in this area, so please let us know your feedback regarding the new version.

Better data collection has been added in case of freezes which will help us to get the information we need. Freezes will most likely result in crashes now, and that information will be sent to us so we can work on fixing them permanently.

Screen space reflections are now enabled by default for “medium” and “low” graphics settings. This should help players who have trouble starting the game. You can still disable this option in the graphics settings for better performance (it affects water reflections).

Ammunition has undergone another round of tweaking and costs have been decreased.

Fixes:

Gameplay:

Added re-specialisation of Skills and Perks

Clues now correctly despawn after fast traveling

Corrected expansion and penetration stats for soft point and polymeric tip rifle ammunition

Fix for “Connor - Lost Words” if you find the notebook before finishing the first objective